NEF piece on housing and land

Josh-Ryan Collins from the New Economics Foundation has produced a lovely piece of prose which ends with these lovely sentences:

“There is a strong case for fundamental changes in the way land is taxed, controlled and used. The speculative profits arising from owning desirable land need to be either taxed or captured by local or national governments — or perhaps communities — by owning the land themselves.

In many East Asian countries, such as South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore, the majority of land is controlled by state corporations — public ‘land banks’. In the US and Canada, there are similar schemes at state or local government level.

These may seem like radical structural interventions for the UK. But the alternative is worsening inequality, rising prices and rents and, eventually, economic and financial collapse as the bubble bursts yet again.”